What is this listening that you speak of?

When I picked X-man up from school yesterday, he was in his group spot in the middle of Spanish with Ms. Nora. I always feel guilty that it seems I get him during Spanish more than any other time of the day. He loves Ms. Nora. She sings the Chocolate song from Dora. I sat down on the floor by one of his teachers and watched. Ms. Nora held up a photo of a pineapple and asked the room what the name of the fruit was. Everyone said pineapple -- except X-man, who apparently gave it to her in Spanish correctly. She praised him. He got this huge smile on his face. The next fruit card came up. Everyone gave it in English, except the little boy next to X-man, who also gave the right word in Spanish. You could tell they felt pretty proud of pulling it out of their little memories. Then he noticed my presence and came over ready to go to the park to play with Curious J. Usually we have a 10-minute struggle at he car over the fact that he wants to take his own sweet time getting into his carseat. Yesterday, he flew into it, buckled the top buckle and was happy to get going.

When we got to the park, I noticed X-man's diaper was heavy. So I told him we needed to change his pull up before we went to play. No fight. He changed it, let me apply some sunblock and then happily went to play. When we got there, he saw one of our neighbors T-man from down the block. T-man is also in the Tiger room. The two eyed each other, smiled and then hugged. The park district in Savoy is currently pouring concrete to create a sidewalk from the park to the new parking lot. The boys were jabbering on and on about Bob the Builder and cement trucks. Then they named the toddler play area the fire truck and started driving it to "fires" around the park. We'd all jump off (yes, I did this) run to the fire, pretend to put it out with firehose and run back to the firetruck. Curious J staffed the truck while we put out the fires. A new friend Evan joined in, too.

Then I felt hungry and gave X-man the 5-minute warning. Then a 2-minute warning. Then I called time to go -- and he started walking for the car. No fight over the car seat. No fight over going inside while I made dinner. No complaints about having to sit at the table and eat dinner when he wanted to play Legos. He was so good that I asked him if he wanted to go to the CARE meet up at the softball game at Mommy's school. He was very excited. He took his foam baseball with him, and it was a good thing he did. When we got there, they were a small group of pre-schoolers and one "big kid" having a BLAST running around the grass between the fields playing follow the leader, ring around the rosie and other games.

When I gave him the two-minute warning, he started to half cry. He said, "I want to stay and play with my friends!" Then I pointed out the sun was going down and that I'd like to show him my school. He waved goodbye and took off with me. We drove by the building where I have classes that's attached to the Parkland Daycare Center. He was fascinated. "Mommy go to Building G at Parkland! It's brown like my school!"

Then I drove through Sonic near home and got him a mini scoop of vanilla with M&Ms on top. When it was bedtime, he went up the stairs, got himself into his overnight diaper, put the old diaper in the genie successfully, brushed his teeth and washed his face and hands. Then he had some gas. A lot of gas. And he ran over and sat on his potty. And he sat and sat, face all clenched, as toot after toot came out. But no poop. I tried to explain to him that the pressure in his belly was gas, but he wouldn't hear it. He sat there for 45 minutes -- which got us to 10:15 p.m. Very, very late. He finally gave up and fell asleep, but so did I. I woke up to the dog scratching at the door to go out around 12:30 a.m. 

I guess this post is about realizing that some stuff actually sinks in and when the stars align... my preschooler's brain has some clarity among all the hormonal mess he's dealing with.